


the blind man

by sunflowerbright



Series: Hotel California [20]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Depression, M/M, aw look its the last part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 23:13:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colours. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the blind man

_A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colours. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man._

 

Enjolras wakes up in a cold, cold place, his throat scratchy and his voice gone: he cannot shout for help. Everything is dark, and he is trapped.

Then there is shouting from somewhere close by, muffled though audible, and a light breaks through as a door opens, and he’s being pulled up, and he realises he’s been holding his breath.

For how long he isn’t certain.

He breathes in, clumsily, shakily, trying to get on his feet. He recognizes Combeferre and Jehan, and they look confused and scared and happy.

Everything in the room is cold, too cold, especially because the last thing he remembers has been fire, burning him up.

“I’m okay,” he manages to say, when he finally has a grip on himself enough to understand what Combeferre is asking him. “I’m… I’m okay. I don’t know what happened. But I’m okay now.”

His heartbeat feels odd inside his chest. Maybe because _it’s there_ now. It’s back.

He’s alive.

 

 

 

*

 

 

He wasn’t alive a moment ago.

He was dead, and it was odd.

The memory of it fades quickly, actually: it doesn’t stay with him. Memories of death doesn’t stay with the living, it can’t.

Enjolras thinks, before he forgets, that if it did, they would go insane.

But he dies, and is dead, is dead for a while, and he sees, because that’s all you can do, in this place, you can’t move and shift and breathe and think. He sees other people, dead, of course, because that’s what everyone is here, the one thing that binds all living things in the end, the one thing it comes down to. The only thing they all have in common, sooner or later.

Most of the faces are unfamiliar. The number of faces that are familiar are startling though: there are too many. He’s met them all before. He’s seen them before.

He’s been here before.

It’s a young boy that ends up folding his fingers around Enjolras’ wrist _(how does that work, he doesn’t have a wrist, and the boy doesn’t have a hand, doesn’t have fingers to grasp with, they’re dead and there’s nothing)_ , and whisper to him in a low, sweet voice.

The whispers are answers.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

Enjolras wakes to blinding light, and Musichetta’s voice demanding that he get up: his head is pounding, eyes straining against the sudden brightness of his room and he feels inexplicably tired, though the clock tells him he’s had around six hours sleep.

“Really, right now?” he mumbles into the pillow he’s buried his face in.

“Oh, come on, you’re usually the first to get up!”

“I died,” he’s grumbling, but he can’t help it. “Shouldn’t I be allowed to sleep just an hour longer?”

She smacks him with a pillow. “You had plenty of rest,” she says, and her voice shakes slightly – Enjolras knows what she means by _rest_. “Get up. I’ve made you coffee. I’ve found some information on Ana-Maria and Michael. Enjolras, I said, _get up_.”

He gets up, because one doesn’t disobey Musichetta when she uses _that voice_ , dragging of his blanket and feeling a drag of something heavier dumping to the floor.

He bends and picks it up, frowning.

“Musichetta, did you strip while you were in here?” he slowly asks, loud enough to hear: _god_ , he hopes not.

“What?”

“Is the green sweater in here yours?”

“No!” she shouts back, clearly impatient. “Enjolras, get your ass out here! The coffee’s getting cold!”

Enjolras ignores her, almost involuntarily. The hoodie is worn, split a bit in the seam by the shoulder, lighter in some places where the sun has taken its toll, scruffy and with a scent like almonds mixed in whiskey, rich and dark, specks of paint, mostly gold and red, flecked over it as well. The fabric is soft still, and Enjolras’ head is reeling.

It’s not unusual, finding things that don’t belong to him in his own room: Courfeyrac frequently uses the entire space of the flat as his private keep-safe. Combeferre often forgets books here, and then just lets them stay wherever they are for his friends to read. There are cigarettes that Bahorel has bought, and that Enjolras only sometimes smokes, when he’s had an off day, in the cupboards, Musichetta’s nail-polish strewn in the sink, and at least two of Feuilly’s uniforms that Courfeyrac promised to wash after some kind of really persistent grease proved too much for the man. Spare-change and pamphlets, rings and keys all disappear and reappear in some odd place connected to them, because that’s what happens when you live in each other’s backpocket, when you’re as likely to go to sleep on your friend’s sofa as your own bed at the end of the day, because wherever they are, that’s home as well. Even for someone like Enjolras who appreciates privacy, it has become almost second nature.

It’s not his sweater, so it must be someone else’s. Someone else wearing a deep, dark green, worn, but clearly well-loved sweater, filled with paint.

Feuilly or Jehan then. Bossuet is an artist as well, but he prefers pencils and coal.

It’s just a sweater. But Enjolras doesn’t want to let go of it. He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t know how it got there, but really, he doesn’t know how half of the things in his flat got there, so it shouldn’t matter.

“Enjolras!”

“Coming,” he says, and folds the hoodie carefully, and puts it on the bed before walking out to her, and to welcome the new day.

Musichetta has invaded his kitchen: there are several notebooks strewn all around her, all in different colours or with different patterns. They aren’t numbered, and don’t seem to be organised at all, but he knows that, should he ask, she would know exactly in which notebook to look for it, had she written it down. Her system is almost as impressive as his. Almost.

She’s chewing on the top of her pen and watching him intently as he takes his coffee and slowly sits down across from her. She’s possibly mustering the very last of her patience, waiting for Enjolras to get at least a little caffeine in his system, because unless there’s a crisis, he doesn’t really wake properly before he’s drunk at least two cups.

_There’s someone pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Come out of bed, Enjolras, seriously…”_

He puts the cup down. “You said you’d found something?”

Musichetta smiles at him and rifles through the open notebook in front of her.

“You know I’ve been looking for a while,” she said. “But what with ancient myths and religions and fantasy books in multitudes, it’s been pretty hard finding something when all you have to search for is ‘reincarnation’ and fake names. And Javert and Montparnasse left me with undead, and regeneration and semi-immortality to add as well. But then I realised that I was researching them as separate issues, when really they were connected.”

“I don’t follow,” Enjolras frowns at her. It’s really too early for this.

“I got talking to this guy at the library,” Musichetta continues. “And he’d written a paper on the earliest appearances of some of the popular myths in fiction today. When was the word ‘vampire’ first used in relation to someone rising from the grave, what cultures had people turning into animals, which of them had that as a good thing and which of them saw it as monsters, all that. And of course a large part of it is speculation, I mean, he went really, really far back, but then I mentioned someone rising from the grave without becoming evil, or still being seen as ‘dead’ like a vampire or a spirit would, basically a monster, and he said that there was one specific myth that had appeared over and over again, with roughly the same themes and story. A story about a man and a woman who died, and then crawled out of their graves the next night.”

Enjolras stills. “A man and a woman?”

“Every time. I mean, the story changes. Sometimes they’re lovers, sometimes they’re siblings, or mother and son, father and daughter, sometimes they only live in the same village, but they die together every time, almost always in an accident: drowning is the most common. One of them, it’s a much later version, has their house being burned down by the other people in the village because they thought the two were doing black magic, but that’s the only one I can find with even a mention of the man and woman being evil. It’s almost always gruesome, but the death isn’t important, it’s the rising, and it’s specific to almost every story that the death somehow… purifies them. In almost every single story, the two are seen as angels or holy beings when they come back, and they’re worshipped by the humans in the region. In some versions, one of them kills the other.”

_“He’s gone,” the boy whisper, and someone else, with blue eyes and curly, black-as-night hair leans close to Enjolras and holds his hand in the dark._

“It’s just a story,” he tries to dismiss, though he’s listening intently: Musichetta’s voice paints pictures in large and broad strokes, almost like…

Almost like Feuilly. He means to say Feuilly.

“The oldest version I could find,” she continues, undeterred. “Calls them, and this is the translated version, remember that, _The Bringers of Life_. A woman loses her child, and later, when she’s old and frail, sees him again as a ten-year old. He came back to life, later, got a… the story calls it ‘a new gift granted’, which we can interpret as that he was born again, reincarnated in a new, similar form, only shortly after dying. Now the woman, she was present at the funeral of the man and the woman who died and then arose, and the story says she cried _‘mournful tears’_ at the two’s death. The son then tells the mother, that the two came back to life and that they are doing good in the world, but that one of them made a mistake, and they split ways.” She leans back. “It’s Michael and Ana-Maria.”

“You can’t know that,” Enjolras says. “Not for sure.”

“Also,” she bites out. “The same story was in Mabeuf’s library. With his notes. Believing it to be true.”

Enjolras drains the last of his coffee. “Mabeuf might be wrong.”

“And he might not be,” Musichetta leans forward with a sigh. “What is with you today?”

He doesn’t know. His mind keeps flickering back to a green hoodie on his bed, and the ghost of fingers touching his shoulder, and he _doesn’t know_.

“Dying’s tough,” he ends up saying, before swiftly changing the subject. “So the new theory we’re running with is that they were both initially human, but then something happened to them… the same thing that happened to Montparnasse and Javert?”

“Or something similar. We don’t know if they were meant to come back or not. If it was… God, or whatever, that did it. If it was just random occurrence, a weird mutation giving them immortality.”

“Aren’t lobsters immortal, I think Combeferre once told me lobsters were immortal.”

“Combeferre would know.”

She leaves shortly after, sensing that his mood doesn’t get better even with more coffee, and Enjolras feels a little guilty: it’s great, and he wants to express it, because it might just be a false lead and vague hints, but its more than they’ve had for weeks and its getting somewhere, and if they can understand their enemies, then they can fight them. They can fight them, and win. But he feels restless, too restless to focus, and it irritates him, which makes it even harder to concentrate, because he’s irritated at _himself_ , and not even in a constructive way, because there is literally no reason for him to feel like this.

_One of them made a mistake, and they split ways._

“Enjolras,” Courfeyrac sighs in exasperation down the phone when he calls him to complain about his own, current mental state. “Enjolras, you just came back from the dead not 24 hours ago. You’re mostly likely suffering from mild trauma, or at least shock, or maybe you’re just getting a cold from the climate in the freaking morgue, okay? I mean, _we’re_ all as freaked out as you, but you need time to get on top of yourself, so just let us handle everything for the next few hours at least, you copy? Lie on the sofa and watch a silly movie. Go sleep for a while. Get drunk. Get a tattoo. Bake a cake. Just _relax_.”

There’s a war to be fought, and absolutely nothing on TV he wants to watch. He’s had too much coffee to sleep, he is not getting drunk when it’s hardly even noon, absolutely not, and he can’t bake to save his own life. And he’s not getting a tattoo, not even when he’d once admired the dark lines stretching across skin marred by scars and memories but still intoxicatingly beautiful and…

Yeah, no, he’s not getting a tattoo, at least not right now, because right now really isn’t the time for that, it really isn’t.

He cannot focus at all, and it is frustrating: he ends up sitting down in the kitchen again, going over the story Musichetta had told, contemplating, thinking.

He ends up calling Cosette.

“Was it Michael’s men that attacked us when we came for Eponine? Was it Michael’s men Ai rescued you from?”

“I’m fairly certain it was Jethro’s,” Cosette tells him. “Why?”

“And we’re sure Javert isn’t working for Michael?”

“Yeah, fairly certain. I mean, when he almost shot me, it was because he was frightened about his memories. He wasn’t under orders or anything. From what I could gather from Ai, he joined up with Jethro’s men later to… well, to keep me safe, actually. He said something about a debt owed, and I think it has something to do with my dad, but he’s keeping his mouth shut on the subject. Stubborn old man.”

“And Montparnasse?”

“Eponine says that she doubts Montparnasse works for anyone,” he can hear her shifting slightly. “What are you thinking?”

“What I’m thinking?” Enjolras lets out a puff of air. “I’m thinking that Michael isn’t here, and he hasn’t been for a long while.”

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

The dead boy had said, _what would you do if you were immortal?_

And Enjolras had thought, _I’d try to find a way to undo it._

*

 

 

 

Enjolras can’t fall asleep, so he goes in search of Eponine instead.

“I have no clue where Montparnasse is,” she tells him when he finds her and asks. “I met him yesterday, but he started acting strange and then he left. Stole my lighter too.” She shrugs. “Sorry.”

He goes after Jehan instead.

“I wanted to tell you,” Jehan insists, making tea like he’s been possessed: there’s way too much for them both to drink, but Enjolras isn’t going to complain or say anything. This is a coping method. The whole kitchen smells like Jasmine tea, and Enjolras never liked Jasmine tea, but the scent is achingly familiar anyway, and he feels himself calm down on the spot.

“About it all,” Jehan sighs, breathes deeply. “It was so fucked up. _I_ was so fucked up. I mean, I was seeing fucking dead people! You get locked up for less.”

“No-one’s doubting that it was real, Jehan. We’ve seen too much. And we know you.”

“I know. It’s still discontenting. And it’s… I’m not happy, because I could have done something, because I know I should have told you, _especially_ because half of it was so clearly them manipulating me, but it was just… I talked to dead people. That’s… frightening, but it’s also… intriguing. Intoxicating. I couldn’t help it.” He stirs in too much sugar. “I didn’t really want them to leave me alone.”

Enjolras drinks his tea dutifully: it burns his tongue, but he hardly notices. The scent of Jasmine is taking over everything else, making him finally feel tired since he woke up this morning, as if his body is finally done being tense and on edge.

He needs to cut back his coffee-intake.

“Jehan,” he says when he puts the cup down again. “I don’t think that was Michael. I don’t think Michael ever really existed. I think… I think it’s all just a ploy.”

Jehan turns around slowly. “What?”

“I think Ana-Maria made him up.”

“What the hell would make you think she would do that?”

Enjolras takes a deep breath. “Because she wants us to kill her.”

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

The boy tells him that that’s the wrong answer.

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

Enjolras finally falls asleep, but he doesn’t remember his dreams.

He wakes up clutching a green sweater in his hands.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

“Your theory is flawed,” Courfeyrac tells him the next day. “Ana-Maria has been around for years. She’d have found someone to piss off enough to get the job done already. Don’t you think?”

“Maybe not,” Combeferre says slowly, always the diplomat. “Maybe it just went wrong, time and time again, and she’s come to the point where she doesn’t really know what she’s doing.”

“Exactly,” Enjolras says, and he turns around because someone is laughing, but there’s no-one there.

“You alright?”

“Anyway,” he shakes the feeling off again. “I’m… what was I saying?”

“You were saying that Ana-Maria made up a convoluted and elaborate scheme in order to get us tiny humans to kill her. Which makes no sense. Why wouldn’t she just ask one of us to do it for her? I’m sure there are a few who would be happy to oblige.”

“She’s deranged,” Enjolras mumbles, but he knows Courfeyrac is right.

It doesn’t make sense.

_What would you do if you became immortal?_

He needs to talk to Montparnasse. Or Javert.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

It is Montparnasse he finds, the man leaving a trail like he wants Enjolras to end up at the small, secluded café he’s currently in.

“So nice of you to show up,” the light inside makes his hair shine with a blue tint.

“You’ve been waiting for me?” Enjolras takes a seat without thinking much about it: it’s discontenting, that Montparnasse seems a step ahead of him, but he came here to get answers, and he’s not leaving without them.

“For a while,” Montparnasse tells him, eyes flickering over his face. “I was hoping you would send Gabriel, though.”

“Gabriel?” he leans back in his chair, watching the other man warily. “How the hell do you know Gabriel?”

Montparnasse stares at him for a few long seconds, betraying no emotion except for the hard set of his jaw.

“You had questions?” he asks, and Enjolras knows he can’t afford to pass up an opportunity: Montparnasse can be fickle, and he might close up at any time.

“I think Ana-Maria is like you,” he says. “You and Javert: I think that’s how it all started. She woke up, and couldn’t die. And then she became obsessed with dying. She wanted to die. And that’s what this is all about. She created Michael, as a sort of incentive to make people do her bidding, or maybe she killed him trying to figure out how to die as an immortal.” He feels indecisive, and foolish almost, grasping for straws in the air. He knows there’s something missing, knows what he’s saying isn’t right, doesn’t even know why exactly he arrived to this theory, except that, for all that they’ve been in the thick of the fight several times, Michael is never _really there._

He tries to remind himself that Ana-Maria wasn’t either, but somehow that doesn’t feel right – she was there. Maybe she was the one who pulled him out, and he remembers her. Someone had to bring him back.

“I don’t know,” Montparnasse says. “I’m sorry if you thought I somehow magically possessed all the answers, but I don’t.”

Enjolras gets up and leaves without another word.

He’s not even that disappointed: he doesn’t know what he was expecting. But it certainly wasn’t Montparnasse watching him sadly, as if something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Maybe not surprisingly, Mabeuf holds no answers either, or at least he’s not giving them up. The man seems bone-dead tired, and Enjolras thinks that he has probably broken his alliance with Ana-Maria, and he’s… alone now. Maybe he’s even dying.

He is standing right above the morgue, and it sings to him, somehow. He leaves quickly, shuddering until he finally steps outside again.

And then there’s Fantine.

“Not everything has an explanation,” Fantine tells him, which is code for, _I have no fucking clue either, son_.

Enjolras thinks he wants to bang his own head against a wall, but mostly he wants to because he is not feeling nearly as frustrated or determined as he should be. He goes home that night, and he sleeps, and he wouldn’t normally have been able to sleep, would have been tossing and turning. Normally, he would not have stopped until he had his answers, or had to admit defeat.

He’s still restless. He can’t stop it.

He buries his face in a green hoodie and dreams.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

They start recruiting. Musichetta makes more phone-calls than should be humanly possible in a day, Jehan and Courfeyrac take a train to the other side of the country, Feuilly gets ready to drive to Italy. It’s all a lot easier when Mabeuf tiredly promises to fund them, and Myriel leaves the library with his records and texts open for their use. They have access to safehouses and Pocket-dimensions suddenly, and there are Recruits running scared and alone, hunted and confused. They, Enjolras thinks, has not been as fortunate as them, a support system of friends and family already in place.

Many will probably stay: many might join Ai, wishing to be neutral in this thing, wishing to live out the rest of their lives in relative peace.

A few, he thinks (hopes) will listen and understand, and join them.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

The boy’s name is Etienne, and he died only a little before Enjolras did, in the grand scheme of things.

The boy is dead, and he isn’t coming back, so he’s got the perfect get-out-of-jail-free card.

So he whispers to Enjolras again.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

“Michael is dead,” he tells Montparnasse, why the hell would he seek out Montparnasse? “She’s keeping his name around, tossing it in the air to make people frightened, to make them loyal to her, so that she won’t be lonely, so that we think we need her. But Michael is dead. He wanted to die, and he found a way, but Ana-Maria doesn’t want to die, does she?”

“I’m sure she has too much fun messing up our lives,” Montparnasse tells him, and that’s that.

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

It should be a relief. He should be as shocked as the others, as happy that they don’t have a third problem to deal with (two, only two, the one driven to the brink because she’s been alive and alone for too long, and the extremist who thinks to eradicate them all). Michael being gone solves a problem.

But he’s not relieved. He’s not _sad_ either. He’s not… he’s not anything.

It’s not really, Enjolras thinks, clutching a cup of Jasmine tea between his hands, sure that they must hurt because it’s so hot, but not moving them away - it’s not really that he can’t feel.

It’s like he’s forgotten how to.

And it won’t seem to stop, this uneasy feeling of things clicking into place, of everything being simple and as its always been, but he’s sleeping too easily and caring too little, and Enjolras has never not cared, he doesn’t know how to, doesn’t know how to shut off the streams of emotion, doesn’t know how to do anything constructive with it if he’s not turning it into words and speeches, if he’s not convincing a crowd or just convincing himself. But the restlessness is gone, and instead he’s obsessing over _not_ feeling restless, and he doesn’t know what’s happening.

“I think they did something to me,” he says, over the phone. It’s three am and Courfeyrac is at Jehan’s instead of their flat. And he probably hates him now.

“Excuse me?”

“When I came back. I think… something happened to me. I’m not the same.”

“Enjolras, _you died_ ,” Courfeyrac is clearly trying to be patient, but its failing in the face of being woken up in the middle of the night, to hear his friend rant. Something he actually should be used to, Enjolras thinks, because it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. “Of course you feel weird, okay? Remember how out of it we all were after we got our memories back? I was dizzy for weeks, Joly thought he was dying… well, dying again. Experiences like that shake you, a ton, and Enjolras, it’s okay to feel like that, you’re allowed to be scared and not know what to do with yourself. You thought it was over for now, and now it’s not.”

“I thought it was over.”

“What?”

“I said… you said, that I thought it was over.”

“Yeah, I did? I mean, that’s… you were kind of free, at least for a little while, you know? That’s… this is a philosophical discussion that we shouldn’t be having right now, because I am about to keel over in exhaustion Enjolras, and you are obviously very distressed.”

“I was aware,” he says. “I mean, at least for the most part. And I _remember_. I remember being dead, Courfeyrac.”

There’s silence on the other end, long and deep and, he thinks, maybe almost mournful.

He shouldn’t, because the living and the dead shouldn’t mix like that, but he remembers being dead. He does. He wouldn’t have so many answers if he didn’t remember being dead, and being given them by beings just like him.

“Okay,” Courfeyrac says then, because he clearly cannot find anything else to say. What is there to say, truly? “Okay.”

“So,” he continues, feeling his heartstrings tying themselves in knots. He’d been right. “So why don’t I remember the moments before I was brought back?”

Courfeyrac’s silence doesn’t last as long this time. “… Ancient, mystical magics?”

“She’s hiding something from me,” Enjolras feels his heart give a thud, and he knows, _knows_ he’s right. It’s not quite enough to make the feeling of discontent melt away, but it’s something because its _purpose,_ it’s right. “She took something, like she took our lives and memories, and I intend to get it back.”

“Okay,” Courfeyrac sighs. “It is definitely too early for this, Enjolras. I’m hanging up now, and we’ll talk when I get back home.”

Enjolras sits awake, still with the phone in his hand, feeling triumphant and scared and too full of energy to sleep. This had to be it: something for something. Why would she even bring him back? Did she think he would join her side?

No, it had to be something else. And he intended to find out what it was, because he might go mad if he had to live the rest of his life like this.

He realises he is clenching his hands into fists, nails digging into his palms and almost drawing blood, the pain still not enough to ground him. That’s the problem: he’s not grounded, not anymore. He hasn’t been since he was shot (again), since he came back, was pulled out of a dark abyss and opened his eyes in a stark, white room instead, his friends peering worriedly down at him. He tries to think back, to focus on the moment: the nothingness, and then he’d woken. As easy as being pulled from a dream, but it couldn’t have been. He wouldn’t be feeling like this, he is sure of it.

What had been his first thought upon coming back? He’d been scared, locked in a metal-case. He’d been cold. Freezing to the bone, but of course, he had woken up in a goddamn morgue. Not a sauna.

Death hadn’t been warm either, he remembers, which maybe wasn’t surprising, but the feeling of waking up had been… he hadn’t just been freezing, it had been like getting a bucket of ice-cold water thrown over you on a sweltering summer day, and his memories shift and move, because he’d been _warm_ , and then cold when he woke up.

Enjolras thinks that means something, but he can’t for the life of him remember what, and he feels not a single step closer to finding out what the hell Ana-Maria took, what she did to him – because he’s sure something was done, something changed.

He falls asleep shortly after, and doesn’t remember what he may have been dreaming about.

That’s becoming a pattern.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Combeferre brings home a man even taller than Bahorel, who speaks with a thick, undefinable accent and shakes Enjolras hand with surprising gentleness.

He leaves what is obviously a fake name, but the number is genuine, and there’s a spark in his eyes that means he will be coming back.

 

 

 

*

 

 

A young boy, Azelma’s age knocks on his door a day after, and Enjolras has no idea where he came from or how he’s heard of them, but his voice betrays no lies and he wants to help.

He won’t say how he’s heard of them, but he’s willing to help, and Enjolras pushes his curiosity away. He tells himself it’s not important.

At night, he dreams.

 

 

*

 

 

Not surprisingly, Combeferre wants to check him over, to make sure that the coming-back-to-life thing is actually permanent, and he doesn’t just drop dead suddenly. Wants to make sure that there were no weird side-effects.

A bit more surprising though, is the fact that Ai is there.

“You’ve been a bit hard to get a hold of,” his old friend says.

“Sorry,” Enjolras mumbles, realising that he’s been a bit distant since coming back, that he’s been obsessed with… well. With finding Montparnasse and Javert, and the answers that has been bugging him what seems like his whole life, but is actually not that long when you think about it.

“We just worry,” Combeferre says, and that’s that. It’s easy to forgive when you’ve known each other this long, and understanding the other is like second nature.

“How are you feeling?” Ai asks him, right after shining a light in his eye and practically blinding him. Enjolras blinks a few times, trying to focus through the blur and the whiteness.

“I’m alright,” he tells her, which isn’t really true, but the lie slips easily off his tongue, as if this was second nature to him, too: it isn’t. Enjolras knows words, and he knows where to place the focus, how to shift attention, knows how to structure a sentence so the meaning shines clear. He isn’t used to lying.

He wonders when the hell he became so good at it.

“Enjolras,” Ai says then, voice low. “We’re holding Naveen’s funeral in two days. If you want to come.”

“I didn’t know him that well,” Enjolras states, tense, and it’s not a refusal, merely a fact.

“I asked Eponine,” Ai mumbles then. “But I got the impression she didn’t like funerals all that much.”

“Does anyone?” Enjolras asks, and wonders what his own funeral would have been like. What the last one had been like. If he, and the others, even got a proper funeral, traitors that they’d died as.

Ai’s smile has no humour to light up her face. She looks young, he thinks, much younger than she could possibly be. Although memoires of an earlier life might have made her grow up faster – he knows it has for him. When he looks in the mirror, his eyes are bluer than the grey he remembers from this life, a pale shade like a summer-sky, and he keeps looking for something just a bit darker, like the deep shade Jehan had painted the side of a building with, a bird with wings dipped in the ocean.

“No,” she says. “I don’t expect that they do. But if you don’t want to go alone, you can take one of the others. I’m sure Grantaire will go with you, he and Naveen seemed to have an accord.”

His hands jolts out, knocking equipment off the table beside him: it clatters to the floor, noise banging across the room, from wall to wall. It makes them both flinch, and Combeferre jumps and looks up from where he’s going over his notes in the corner.

“Everything alright?” he asks, but Enjolras hears him like he’s on the bottom of the ocean, voice muffled and alien. He’s staring at Ai, who stares back at him. Her eyes are brown, and he’s stuck in a loop where he wonders why it’s that colour staring back at him, and not another.

Then he blinks and she’s gotten her expression under control, and he manages to ignore his heart beating too fast in his chest.

“Who’s Grantaire?” he asks, and Ai frowns.

“What?”

“Seriously,” Combeferre is stalking over to them now, arms folded. “Could you please answer me? What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” Ai says, but she keeps looking at him oddly. “I just… I believe I startled Enjolras, it was not on purpose. I apologise. Forget what I said.”

“Why did you say it?” Enjolras presses. “Who is…”

He wants to ask again. He wants to demand that she answer. And he’s just said it, just uttered the same name she said, _he knows_ that he just said it, but it’s drifted away now, escaped him in a sea of blue, and he doesn’t remember. _Who is it you spoke of?_

“I misunderstood,” she insists, backing away. “I thought you knew him. Clearly you do not.”

She leaves, and Enjolras wonders why he didn’t press harder, why he didn’t ask again and again until he got his answer, because clearly this was important, but that’s slipping away as well, out of his reach. His heart has gotten back to normal, Combeferre’s jotting things down and asking him questions again, and Ai’s dark ponytail has disappeared around the corner: and with it, the uncertainty. The memory that anything unusual had happened at all.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Bahorel and he find a Recruit at the edge of town in the evening of the same day. A young girl, hair and skin pale, hiding in a cheap hotel-room and speaking a blend of French and what sounds like a form of Latin, memories still not settled. Enjolras remembers walking around for almost a full day, talking like he was at a lecture in 1830. She’s scared and proud, and not inclined to trust them, but she’s won over by the time Bossuet gets there, and he even gets her to smile when he trips and nearly crashes into the small aquarium in the lobby. The fish stare at him in wonder and irritation as he apologises, the hotel-managers even more so.

Enjolras feels lighthearted, and lightheaded, as the girl thanks them. This is part of what he’d been working for, after all.

He still feels restless.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

He ends up going to Naveen’s funeral alone, standing at the edge of the cemetery and looking on. Fantine is there, surprisingly, and Cosette is standing beside Ai, holding her hand. There are two others, tall both, pale hair and even paler eyes. Siblings, by the looks of it. They don’t even register his presence, but Cosette gives him a faint smile.

They’ve become very good friends in the last few days: she was the first to stop staring at him as if expecting him to drop dead any moment. He remembers a time when he didn’t like her at all, and feels silly. Just because of Marius? He wonders why he would begrudge someone else being in love. If that had even been it.

He wants to catch that thought, wants to think back: why had he been so hostile towards Cosette, at first? Even with Marius’ lovestruck foolishness, it seemed excessive – it wasn’t like it was Cosette’s fault that someone had fallen in love with her.

But he doesn’t remember. He tries – to think of when she pulled him out of the water, what they’d talked about after. It feels like there’s a heavy fog in his mind, and no matter how hard he tries, it won’t lift.

It isn’t until the end of the ceremony that he sees the tall, broad man standing even further away, shadowed by a tree, almost hiding behind it: he moves, just as Enjolras looks, which is the only reason he even sees him. Their eyes lock, and Enjolras thinks that, had Javert been a different man, he might have smiled at him.

He feels anger well up, ugly and dark, and he’s stalked over there before he can even think about it, the others already going, maybe wondering where he is: he doesn’t even think of that. All he knows is that the man in front of him has caused pain, too much pain _(and he remembers a life before, but he doesn’t remember now, there’s something he doesn’t remember now)_ , but before he can do anything violent and potentially foolish, Javert holds up a hand for him to stop, defences clearly down.

“I merely wish to talk,” he says, and there’s something pleading in his tone that makes Enjolras stop and actually listen.

“Good,” Enjolras says. “Because I’ve been looking for you.” He has his answers now, but he still doesn’t know what Ana-Maria took, and Javert might not either but…

But he feels like this is his last chance.

Javert, however, doesn’t say anything, merely reaches out a hand, palm upwards, handing him something and…

“A match-box?” Enjolras asks in surprise, but he’s reached out his hand to touch the white and red and blue already, and when his fingers brush against it, he remembers.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

He’s drowning or at least it feels that way, salty waves lapping at his heels, and then pulling him under, and Enjolras wants to scream for help, but there’s only water in his lungs and it burns.

It burns, because he’s being pulled through fire, he _remembers_ being pulled through fire, but he came out of it untouched.

_“Enjolras! This here is Grantaire, that fellow I was talking to you about yesterday…”_

_“Sure, people get tired of all this shit. They get tired and then they rally, and then nothing happens for a while, and then they get tired of nothing happening, so they go home. People are little shits who change their minds, and it’s going to take more than a few protestors – a few school-boys - to change things.”_

He’s aware that he’s stumbling forward, pain shooting through his body as his hands take off the brunt of the fall, palms scraping against grass and the dirt on  
the ground.

_“Marius won’t be available,” Enjolras can feel a headache building up. “And no-one else is there.”_

_“Ask Grantaire,” Combeferre suggests: he looks and sounds as bone-dead tired as Enjolras feels. He frowns._

_“Grantaire won’t do it.”_

_“Grantaire would do anything for you.”_

_“What do you mean by that?” Enjolras looks at his friend, in time to see the look of horror._

_“I shouldn’t have said that.”_

_“Combeferre?”_

_“It’s just…”_

_“Please tell me.”_

_“… Grantaire’s in love with you.”_

“Fuck,” he gets out, because this is too much, it’s all swimming inside his head, and it’s not missing pieces finally slipping into place, it’s something that was taken from him, forcefully, and this is how Grantaire must have felt, when he finally got his memories back, wasn’t it the same way, Enjolras thinks it was the same way, or he would if he _could think_ , could do anything past seeing a stream of images, feeling the heat and the agony. The pain from his fall is a relief: it distracts enough for him to breathe.

_“It has recently come to my attention…”_

_“Grantaire, you are incapable of believing...”_

_“That you have certain… I mean, that you…”_

_“Of thinking, of willing…”_

_“That you have certain romantic feelings towards me…”_

_“Of living…”_

_“You’d rather wallow in your own self-pity than face the world around you, and that is why I can never imagine  
anyone ever having the slightest inkling of love for you!”_

_“And of dying…”_

“Enjolras,” Javert’s voice is booming in its intensity, or maybe it’s because he’s actually hearing it, and not just repeating it in his head, an obsessed mantra that assaults him while he’s least prepared: he’d never thought he’d find the other man a grounding, fixing point. Javert places a hand on his arm and helps him to sit up, so he’s leaning against the tree instead of falling further unto the ground.

He breathes deeply through his nose and tries to focus.

“I’m okay,” he says, and realises that he’s clutching the match-box in his hand so tightly that it’s almost crumbling: the paint is falling off in small pieces, speckled over his hand and fingers. “I can…”

“Breathe through it.”

“Yes.”

_“I had a list, uhm. About. About what I needed to tell you, but I, I forgot it.”_

_“I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”_

_“I’d do anything for you. I love you.”_

He opens his eyes again, pushing past the feelings of dizziness and the hurt and anger and _burning_ simmering just underneath his skin.

“Where is he?”

Javert looks sincerely apologetic. “I do not know.”

“I have to find him.”

“I’m sorry. I cannot help you.”

He wants to selfishly hate Javert for that, but the edges of the match-box are cutting into his hand, and he knows he can’t.

_“Is it really that hard for you to believe that I love you?”_

Enjolras gets back to the flat in a daze, a blur, memories pressing close until he can barely stand. Courfeyrac’s gotten back, he notices as he opens the door: his friend lets out a worried sound when he sees Enjolras’ bloodied hands and knees, and quickly pulls him into the bathroom to help fix him up. Enjolras lets him, feeling like the whole world has been muted down, like he’s in shock and needs someone to snap him out of it.

“We need to find him,” he tells Courfeyrac as his friend hovers and cleans his cuts and scrapes, just like Enjolras had helped Grantaire with his cuts and scrapes, once upon a time, in a goddamn cabin in the middle of nowhere: he’d held him close in the night and nearly died when Grantaire had gotten a fever, nearly lost himself when Grantaire had been in danger of slipping away again.

“He’s out there, completely fucking alone,” Enjolras keeps going: Courfeyrac is intent on his work. “ _Alone_ , Courfeyrac, do you have any idea how much he hates that? You probably do. He thinks we won’t even recognise him if we see him, we might as well have _abandoned_ him,” he can feel himself getting choked up: it draws Courfeyrac’s attention at least. “Do you have any idea,” he tries to continue. “What he might do… what he might think… what he might do to himself, Courfeyrac? What would you do if you suddenly lost everyone you cared about? _What would you do?!”_

Courfeyrac is staring at him with wide eyes. “I don’t know,” he says. “I can’t imagine. Enjolras,” he sounds patient, but scared. “Who are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Grantaire,” Enjolras hisses, feeling tears pressing behind his eyelids, and he’s not angry with Courfeyrac or anyone else, he’s angry with himself, _how the hell could he forget?_

“I’m sorry,” Courfeyrac says, and sounds it. “I don’t know who that is.”

Enjolras presses the heel of his hands into his closed eyes, the band-aids feeling alien against his skin, and he wants to _scream_ , wants to get angry, _how could you, how could we?_ and it isn’t until then that he realises that this, _this_ , is not just what Ana-Maria took, it’s what Grantaire agreed to offer, and now he needs to find Grantaire to punch him as well, because that wasn’t fucking fair.

“Here,” he says, digging the crumbled match-box out of his pocket and showing it into Courfeyrac’s hand: he only stares at it in confusion, but he jumps and exclaims in shock when Enjolras’ hand shoots out and connects with the wall.

“Ah, fuck,” there is not that much blood on his knuckles, considering, but some of his bones feels wrong: it might just be the blow, though.

“Jesus Christ and all the gods above, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac grasp a hold of his arm, as if afraid he’s going to attempt to do something like that again. It’s not completely without purpose: he might just. “Don’t do that… we’re going to a hospital.”

“I’m fine,” he says, and it’s an old song, but this time he actually wrestles himself out of his friend’s grip and stalks out of the room.

“Enjolras, please tell me what’s wrong.”

 _Everything_ , he wants to answer. The answer _is_ everything, because he remembers falling in fucking love now, with someone he never thought he would _(he never thought he’d fall in love at all, and now he has and he is so very scared)_ , and he remembers fingers streaked with paint brushing against his own, through his hair, over his skin, and all the anger leaves him, like it wasn’t even there to begin with. How could he be angry when Grantaire has done something Enjolras might, in a moment of foolishness, do for him as well?

How could he be angry when he might never see Grantaire again?

He doesn’t know how to find him: he doesn’t even know where to start. Grantaire might have left the country all-together: if Courfeyrac doesn’t remember, it’s unlikely that any of the others do either, at least aside from Ai – she’s a lead, but not a strong one.

_( he almost laughs at how cynical he sounds about that, but he can’t laugh, all he can do is yearn, fiercely )_

“I think I need sleep,” he tells Courfeyrac, because Courfeyrac doesn’t remember and he can’t even look at him right now: it’s not his fault, but Enjolras is still scared of what he might do, how frustrated he’s going to become.

Courfeyrac hesitates, but then firmly tells him he’ll be in just the other room, don’t do anything foolish, and they’ll talk when he’s rested. It’s fair: he’s acting out of control in a way he hasn’t since they were children just becoming friends, when the anger still coursed hot through him, when he didn’t have the same outlet for it like he has now.

He has what was taken from him back, but he’s still restless, because attached to it is someone he needs beside him, and it’s scary just how strong that feeling is, but it’s exhilarating as well, because _it’s been missing_ , and when he sees the green hoodie still lying on his bed, there is a complete certainty inside of him, that he is going to do everything he can to get that damnable man back with them.

It should not even be here, the sweater – he reaches out to touch it, afraid it won’t be real. But it is, and he almost falls over in relief, sitting on his bed and burying his face in it: it isn’t just scents in varieties, it’s Grantaire it smells like, and fuck, he still feels pathetic and useless, conviction be damned, and…

And the hoodie _shouldn’t be here._

Enjolras practically falls over himself in order to get his phone on the nightstand, and he knows that there will be no pictures of Grantaire in there, knows it’s all covers of books that Feuilly has recommended for him, sent so he doesn’t forget, knows its Combeferre making faces, knows its Eponine and Gavroche hiding under a pile of stuffed toys, knows it’s more selfies of Bahorel and Courfeyrac than should possibly be able to be contained in the world, because they have such a horrible habit of stealing his phone, but there will be no Grantaire. All texts from him are gone, his number coded into the phone, and Enjolras wishes he had Joly’s magical ability to remember every single phone-number in his head, but who would need that when you can code them into your phone, and his palms starts hurting again now, the corners of the plastic digging into his injuries because he’s clutching at it so hard.

He shifts through his pictures anyway. Through his mails and search-history, through his texts and notifs. There’s nothing. There’s nothing, just like Grantaire might be fucking nothing, how long has it been, how long has he been alone, how long has been thinking he’ll be alone forever?

Enjolras doesn’t dare wonder if there is even anything left for him to find. He pushes those thoughts as far away as possible, because he cannot bear it.

He does his call-history last, and there’s five messages on his voice-mail, one from Musichetta, one from his contact in Nice, and one from Courfeyrac. The last two are a private number, but the first is Ai, reminding him of the funeral again, and he can feel his heart already sinking when he tries the next message.

There’s nothing but static on the other end, a whoosh of air as if a truck or maybe a train is slowing down close by. It might be a pocket-dial, but then he hears someone shift and a small exhalation of breath, and it could be anyone, it’s not loud enough for him to…

The sound of another train coming in almost drowns it out, muttered quietly as it is, and he can’t discern the words, can only just hear the voice, and it might not be enough but he knows, _knows_ its Grantaire.

The words sounds suspiciously like _‘fuck this shit’_ , and then he hangs up, and Enjolras isn’t sure if he wants to laugh or cry.

He gets to work instead.

Ai seems to have melted off the face of the earth since the funeral, so Enjolras follows on a second lead, which is Eponine. The one who has known Grantaire the longest, in this life at least.

“I don’t know why you’d want to see it,” she mumbles, standing behind him. They’re in Grantaire’s room – what’s _supposed to be_ Grantaire’s room – and instead it’s half Gavroche’s bunk, half storage. There are boxes and folders, all holding old documents about the Thénardier-family. There should be birth-certificates, transactions, orders for arrest, and some kind of documents for the kids they’d fostered for the money.

“This might take a while,” he says to her.

“What are you even looking for?” she asks, curious and half-way ready to offer help, but still wanting to back out if it turns out Enjolras’ organising skills have simply gone to his head and he now thinks he needs to do it for everyone he knows as well.

“You wouldn’t recognise it if you saw it,” Enjolras says, and fervently hopes that he will.

It takes almost the entire day, and Azelma brings him a sandwich at one point, but he’s still hungry and tired and on the verge of dehydration when he finally finds something.

It’s not anything really, certainly not anything that might be useful. What it is, is a damn receipt from a jewellery store, with hand-writing across that looks too neat and careful to be the careless scrawl he knows so well, but the curve of the r’s and the tiny drawing in the corner are unmistakeable.

“Do you still have these?” he asks Eponine, and hands her the receipt for the small, pearl-earrings that must have been a present for her birthday. She frowns.

“I remember those,” she mumbles. “That’s weird, who the hell gave them to me?”

“Eponine?”

“I think we pawned them,” she says. “For Montparnasse’s bail. Man, he still owes me for that.”

“You just said ‘we’,” Enjolras presses on, knowing that she’d kept Azelma and Gavroche as far away from that kind of thing as she possibly could. Eponine blinks at him, and it’s not quite dawning realisation in her eyes, but there is something.

“Yes, me and… oh my god,” she looks stricken. “I don’t… I don’t remember.”

“It’s Grantaire,” Enjolras tells her, his tone clear that there is no argument. “And he was basically your brother, at least for as long as I have known you both.” _At least as long as I have known you in this life._

This life is really the one that matters most. This is the one he needs to focus on, because it’s right here and now that he needs to find Grantaire.

“Granta… what did you say his name was?” It’s slipping away from her again already, but Enjolras wordlessly points to the receipt, and it might not be the memory of the man that mattered to her so much, but she recognises the slope of the _R,_ the curves and the language, and she might not think he’s gone mad after all.

“Grantaire,” she says then, and the name sounds almost familiar on her tongue. She’s clutching the receipt harder now, it’s almost crumbling. Enjolras thinks her memories must be hovering just on the edge: she’s close to remembering now “That’s who you’re looking for?”

“Yes.”

“… you need to talk to Montparnasse.”

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

Courfeyrac calls him half a minute later, and says _“Fuck, Grantaire!”_ and what sounds like Bahorel is in the background, shouting. He gets a text from Combeferre, and Feuilly runs up to him in the street rambling about Frank Dicksee, Joly’s been crying and Bossuet apparently fell over and knocked his knee against a table. Eponine hasn’t let go of the receipt yet, and Jehan merely turns to him right before they go looking for Montparnasse and tells him that they won’t stop until they’ve found Grantaire, and kicked his ass.

This time, Enjolras does laugh.

 

 

*

 

 

 

The young girl before him looks a lot like Ana-Maria, and it is deeply unsettling: her eyes are what does it though, they’re wide and dark and full of life.

“I’m interested in your offer,” she says, her accent hardly slipping through her French: she’s clearly used to speaking the language. “But I am still unsure.”

“We’re not telling you to risk your life,” he says, pressing conviction into his voice. “We’re not asking for anything really, except support. What we mean to do is going to be dangerous, but it is also, in the end, going to be worth it.”

Her smile shows of all her teeth, white and gleaming. “And what if someone wishes to live forever?”

He stares at her. “Do you really?” he asks, and manages to catch her off-guard with his wording. Her mask slips, and she looks scared, worried.

“Maybe not forever.”

“This way,” he leans forever, keeping her eyes locked on his. “This way, it’ll be your choice. This way it won’t be someone using you like you use a _thing,_ disposing of you once you’ve served your purpose. Life might seem cruel and harsh, and like it’s doing the exact same thing, but your life should be yours, don’t you agree?”

“What I don’t understand,” she says, but her tone is soft, and he knows he’s won her over already. “Is why you are telling me that you are not a true representative. Why you’re telling me I cannot speak of how I came to know of this, ah, movement against Ana-Maria. Are you not a member?”

“No,” Grantaire tells her. “I’m a lonely soul.”

“Ah,” it’s her turn to lean forward. “If it helps, I think your lonely soul may have managed to convince mine. You seem to believe your own words, although it can be hard to tell.”

 _I don’t believe them at all_ , he thinks. _I believe them too much._

“Good,” he says. “I’m glad,” he lies. Or half-lies. He can’t really tell anymore.

It’s hard to tell his own mind at times, when he isn’t even really sure he exists anymore. It’s only been such a short while, but it feels like a lifetime: the air is too hot outside, hitting him like a wall when he exits the hotel lobby, looking for his ride: Montparnasse had bullied him into letting him pick him up after this meeting, but the man can’t be seen anywhere: just as well. Grantaire doesn’t have the energy to argue with him again, doesn’t want to explain that he’s clinging unto straws of helpfulness like a man drowning, because it would be easier, healthier, saner, to cut all ties, but he can’t, he just can’t.

So he’s doing this instead, convincing the people he can find, persuading them, and feels foolish when they leave, and hates them for getting to meet and see the people that were his family, and hates that this is the one time he’s actually doing something right, and he’s so useless that it won’t even be a time when someone will know.

He’s happy Montparnasse isn’t there, because seeing the other man hurts: he talks to Eponine, he hints that he could introduce them again, and he wants to laugh, hollowly, and tell Montparnasse that there is nothing to be done, memories doesn’t just come back like that, and he knows, and coming back to them, to his friends, that wasn’t part of the deal, and he’s afraid, he is so scared of messing it up. Scared of looking at them, and see that polite smile you give to strangers.

So he’s kind of glad that Montparnasse isn’t there to see him, but all thoughts of the other man is driven out of his head when he sees Courfeyrac and Combeferre and Jehan and Bahorel standing near the parking lot, discussing something quietly, and he can see someone get out of Bossuet’s car that’s parked just behind, and if they turn around they might see him, and his heart is crawling out through his throat, he wants to duck and hide, wants to run away, but he can’t.

The sunlight catches Enjolras hair as he ducks his head to look at his phone, and Grantaire thinks that this is the last thing from fair that has ever happened to him.

He wishes he could move as Enjolras slowly lifts his head and looks directly at him, wishes he wasn’t staring at someone who won’t recognise him, wishes he wouldn’t have to see Enjolras frown and then either look away quickly, or nod politely at the stranger staring at him all creepily. He wishes he could look away now and not see the disinterest on the other man’s face – because it might kill him.

It might actually just finish him off completely, seeing that. There’s a reason he’s been avoiding them all.

He isn’t prepared for recognition and relief, and happiness to flitter over a face he knows and loves so dearly, and Grantaire can’t process what’s happening at all: he knows Enjolras can be fast like hell, but the man is a blur now, and then he’s standing right in front of him, looking at Grantaire like he’s the most wondrous thing he’s ever seen, and his brain has definitely short-circuited, because _Enjolras recognises him_.

“Hello,” Enjolras says, _of all things to say_ , the part of Grantaire’s mind that hasn’t burned out mutters, but then Enjolras is reaching out a shaking hand, stopping just short of his shoulder.

“May I?” he asks. It hits Grantaire that he wants to touch him to ensure that he’s real, and he lets out something between a sob and a hysterical laugh and can only nod, and it looks like something breaks inside of Enjolras as well, because he doesn’t touch his shoulder, he takes one step forward and latches unto Grantaire like he’s the last floating bit of boat in a storming ocean, and his voice is breathless when he says, _‘Grantaire’_ , mumbles it into his hair like a prayer, and he wants someone to pinch him so he can know if this is real, but that’s ridiculous because for once, just this once, he has never been so certain that something is real in his life.

“Who the hell is Enjolras hugging?” it sounds like Courfeyrac in the background, and there’s a beat, and then. “Oh fucking hell, _Grantaire!_ ”

He laughs, mostly so that he doesn’t start crying, and buries his face in Enjolras shoulder, listening to familiar voices calling out his name.

“Don’t leave again,” Enjolras asks of him, and Grantaire thinks he doesn’t want to deny this man anything.

“I won’t,” he says, and hopes it’s a promise he can keep. “I won’t. You’ll…” he has to stop and suck in a breath, because his mind is not calm at all, and he’s shaking from fear and exhaustion and pure relief. “You’ll need me to stop you from throwing yourself into overtly dangerous situations.”

“Oh, so it’s your turn to do that now, is it?” Enjolras is teasing him, and his head is spinning, he can’t fucking breathe, and he’s grinning like he’s just won a trip to the moon and back.

“I got you back,” is all he can say, all he can think, and he isn’t sure if he means pulling him out of flames, or just now, this absolutely perfect moment. Maybe Enjolras hears it too, because he pulls away from him slightly, and Grantaire wants to cling for a moment, afraid he’ll disappear if every inch of their bodies aren’t pressed as close together as possible, but Enjolras makes no inclination to move further, merely shifts in order to press their lips together, once and then twice, moving away again to take Grantaire’s hand in his, cradling it gently: his hand is bandaged, Grantaire notes, and he wonders how many times that will happen, how many injuries they’ll have to deal with in the future, how often Enjolras will come to him bleeding and on the verge of death, how long they can actually keep this silly, foolish promise, how long before life gets cruel again and rips as much as it possibly can from them. They have a war to fight, and tomorrow Grantaire is going to go back to thinking it’s a horrible idea, or at least saying that he thinks so, and Enjolras might end up hating him for it, in the end, but right now, he can’t even see the bandage, stark white on Enjolras’ skin, and the scars on his own hand, because they’ve held hands once before, and many times after that, and that, he thinks maybe that’s all that matters, at least for now.

“Did it hurt?” Enjolras asks, looking at the burn-marks, still pink and raw. They’re decorating both his hands, like the patterns he used to paint on himself when the canvas wasn’t enough.

“It doesn’t hurt now,” Grantaire tells him. “It passed.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Michael and Ana-Maria’s story is a story my grandmother once told me when I was little, and it’s a story her and her sister made up when they were children: it had a different ending, but as they got older, my grandmother’s sister hurt my grandmother quite badly and she changed the story when she told it to me. In the original version, they were called Peter and Hannah, and the two died as children, and aged one year in a hundred when they came back. 
> 
> Quote in summary and start by Victor Hugo, who I'm sure you're all familiar with.
> 
> That's it, _Hotel California_ is done now. A big thank-you to everyone who has supported and encouraged me to keep writing throughout these last five months. And thank-you to everyone who has read it until the end. You're all awesome.


End file.
